Nick Clegg: 'rioters were children who had lost their way'

The Liberal Democrat leader announces a £50 million summer school scheme
for children who need help bridging the gap between primary and secondary
education.

5:46PM BST 21 Sep 2011

Mr Clegg speaking at the end of the Lib Dem conference announced there will be a £50m of Pupil Premium cash will be devoted to getting up to 100,000 pupils from deprived backgrounds on the two-week courses.

He claimed that the young people involved in last month's riots felt they had “nothing to lose” and that the future held “little value."

"The summer we saw the consequences of a society in which some people feel they have no stake at all," he said.

"Nobody could fail to be horrified by what we saw during the riots. These weren’t organised campaigns for change. They were outbursts of nihilism and greed."

He added: "It was about what they could get, here and now. Not what lies in front of them, tomorrow and in the years ahead. As if their own future had little value.

"Too many of these young people had simply fallen through the cracks."

Mr Clegg went on to praised the clean-up teams of volunteers which developed in communities devastated by the riots.

He says he must push ahead with the "rehabilitation revolution" for young people as many were in a "corrosive cycle of crime".